Electronics Mortuary

Hi gang,
I would like to kick off a new thread that maybe can be stickied so its easy to access as the years go by, as members post pics of electronics that have died in spectactular fashion

Hopefully this meets with the approval of Ian P and Co

A few things to ask when posting....
dont steal from other sites. Let the pics be of gear you personally or fellow employees have worked on. Lets keep it original
to quote from another forum that I belong to that does something similar, some basic rules / disclaimers....

Note to mortuary contributors: please consider that your boss may not find your submission in the best interests of your Big Company. Try not to send us anything that you might regret.

Note to Big Companies: Don't blame us for posting your spectacular failures, we only post what your employees send us. On the other hand, please don't rip off Electronics Point
pictures for presentations without permission, that's bad manners. Maybe it's time for some training!

Note to mortuary fans: In many cases, if you click on pictures on this page you can see higher resolution images.

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Some pix of a CCTV DVR board from a computer. I noticed that several power rail caps on the PC motherboard had also bulged but not blown. I'm not sure if it was the PC power supply that killed the DVR boards or the other way around. Unfortunately I couldn't keep the boards for a memento as the client wanted them for a insurance claim. Both DVR boards had blown in the same place around the V-regulator area.

cheers
Dave

Attached Files:

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Crydom PF240D25 SSR failure (volcanic eruption). Not due to overload, board, or solder failure afaik. This is the second such SSR I've seen blow up like that. Anyone else?
This manuf's solution was to apply a copper foil over a vent in the bottom, to prevent molten metal from dripping on the floor when the SSR blows, not to use a different SSR..

Here's another addition from my workshop
This 240W mono channel amplifier came in with a blown DC fuse. Of course the first thing ya do is throw another fuse in the beast and see what happens.

You may well ask " why not do some tests first?" well after working with some of the so called field techs I have worked with over the years, who bring back amps etc and the ONLY thing wrong with them was a blown fuse. I tend just to try the easiest route first. Fuses are cheap

I has the top cover already off the amp to get at the DC fuse. I swapped the fuse and switched the amp on and was greeting with a crackling sound and a cloud of smoke.
so switched off immediately.

Ohhh cool I thought, this amp is a rightoff, not worth repairing! so I grabbed the camera and got a workmate to switch it back on whilst I stood ready with the camera

here are the results ... the second pic you can see one of the 2 sets of power transistors, you can see all 5 are blown with 2 of them well cooked.

They are a good amp, the company used 2 main models of this slave amp a 120W and 240W versions. They are a reliable amp they run 24/7 for years, but once they fail thats it!

The myth that electronics runs on the movement of electrons is one of the greatest hoaxes that is perpetuated by the misguided physicist amongst us

Anyone with more than a year or 2 of real world electronics experience knows full well that electronics runs on smoke being channeled to the right places within a device.
And that once that smoke escapes the device no longer works

As some of you know, I changed jobs back in August. I'm no longer in the audio/video industry. Am now in the hi tech surveying and machine control industry. And when I say machine control, I'm not talking about small workshop based equip. I'm referring to dozers, excavators, graders, dump trucks etc for road construction and the mining industry.

All this stuff is GPS based for doing accurate location of the equip to make sure they are digging in the right spot or putting the correct camber onto a new road corner etc.
The gear is manufacturered but a very large, well known US based GPS company. I wont say their name ...to protect the the innocent haha.

This gear gets hellish treatment in the field and your's truely has to make it work again.

The pic shows a GPS receiver unit that is mounted on a mast on any of the above machines .... sometimes a single one sometimes as a pair.

Nothing quite as spectacular as you guys. That said, I've blown pin4 right off a LM3886T amplifier (accidental) and also (accidentally) applied 35V to a 16V electrolytic... now I know what's inside them!!

Yes it's been a long time sice we last heard from you... Good to know you are still around

Hmmmm things got more than a little hot in that PSU huh. Hopefully it's not terminal and the system can be recovered

Well the old saying is that the fastest fuse on 3 legs is a transistor, but you can extend that to virtually any semiconductor device
The other old saying is....
That a transistor protected by a fast blowing fuse will blow first thus protecting the fuse protecting it!!

There is fun to be had in letting the smoke escape just for the fun of it
Specially if you know the unit isn't repairable anyway....
Look at that audio amp that I photo'ed going up in smoke earlier in this thread